Erikson is a Freudian ego-psychologist. This means that he
accepts
Freud's ideas as basically correct, including the more debatable ideas
such as the Oedipal crisis, and accepts as well the ideas about the
ego
that were added by other Freudians such as Freud's daughter,
Anna. However, Erikson is much more society and culture-oriented than
most Freudians, and he often pushes the instincts and the unconscious
practically
out of the picture. Perhaps because of this, Erikson is popular among
Freudians
and non-Freudians alike!

Erik and Joan Erikson

The epigenetic principle

He is most famous for his work in refining and expanding Freud's
theory
of stages. Development, he says, functions by the epigenetic
principle.
This principle says that we develop through a predetermined unfolding
of
our personalities in eight stages. Our progress through each stage is
in
part determined by our success, or lack of success, in all the previous
stages. A little like the unfolding of a rose bud, each petal opens up
at a certain time, in a certain order, which nature, through genetics,
has determined. If we interfere in the natural order of development by
pulling a petal forward prematurely or out of order, we ruin the
development
of the entire flower.

Each stage involves certain developmental tasks that are
psychosocial
in nature. Although he follows Freudian tradition by calling them crises,
they are more drawn out and less specific than that term implies. The
child
in grammar school, for example, has to learn to be industrious during
that
period of his or her life, and that industriousness is learned through
the complex social interactions of school and family.

The various tasks are referred to by two terms. The infant's task,
for
example, is called "trust-mistrust." At first, it might seem obvious
that
the infant must learn trust and not mistrust. But Erikson made it clear
that there it is a balance we must learn: Certainly, we need to learn
mostly
trust; but we also need to learn a little mistrust, so as not to grow
up
to become gullible fools!

Each stage has a certain optimal time as well. It is no use
trying
to rush children into adulthood, as is so common among people who are
obsessed
with success. You can see, for example, the damage done to many child
stars by the adult demands placed upon them. Neither is it possible to
slow the pace or to try to
protect
our children from the demands of life. There is a time for every
purpose under heaven!

If a stage is managed well, we carry away a certain virtue
or
psychosocial strength which will help us through the rest of the stages
of our lives. On the other hand, if we don't do so well, we may develop
maladaptations and malignancies, as well as endanger all our future
development.
A malignancy is the worse of
the two, and involves too little of the
positive
and too much of the negative aspect of the task, such as a person who
can't
trust others. A maladaptation
is not quite as bad and involves too much
of the positive and too little of the negative, such as a person who
trusts
too much.

Children and adults

Perhaps Erikson's greatest innovation was to postulate not five
stages,
as Freud had done, but eight. Erikson elaborated Freud's genital stage
into adolescence plus three stages of adulthood. We certainly don't
stop
developing - especially psychologically - after our twelfth or
thirteenth
birthdays; It seems only right to extend any theory of stages to cover
later development!

Erikson also had some things to say about the interaction of
generations,
which he called mutuality.
Freud had made it abundantly clear
that
a child's parents influence his or her development dramatically.
Erikson
pointed out that children influence their parents' development as well.
The arrival of children, for example, into a couple's life, changes
that
life considerably, and moves the new parents along their own
developmental
paths. Nothing makes you "grow up" faster than having kids of your own!
It is even appropriate to add a third (and in some cases, a
fourth)
generation to the picture: Many of us have been influenced by our
grandparents and grandchildren,
and they by us.

A particularly clear example of mutuality can be seen in the
problems
of the teenage mother. Although the mother and her child may have a
fine
life together, often the mother is still involved in the tasks of
adolescence,
that is, in finding out who she is and how she fits into the larger
society.
The relationship she has or had with the child's father may have been
immature
on one or both sides, and if they don't marry, she will have to deal
with
the problems of finding and developing a new relationship as well. The
infant,
on the other hand, has the simple, straight-forward needs that infants
have, and the most important of these is a mother with the mature
abilities
and social support a mother should have. If the mother's parents step
in
to help, as one would expect, then they, too, are thrown off of their
developmental
tracks, back into a life-style they thought they had passed, and which
they might find terribly demanding. And so on....

The ways in which our lives intermesh are terribly complex and very
frustrating to the theorist. But ignoring them is to ignore something
vitally
important about our development and our personalities.

Stage one

The first stage is the infant, approximately the first year
or
year and a half of life. The task is to develop trust without
completely
eliminating the capacity for mistrust.

If mom and dad can give the newborn a degree of familiarity,
consistency,
and continuity, then the child will develop the feeling that the world
- especially the social world - is a safe place to be, that people
are
reliable and loving. Through the parents' responses, the child also
learns
to trust his or her own body and the biological urges that go with it.

If the parents are unreliable and inadequate, if they reject the
infant
or harm it, if other interests cause both parents to turn away from the
infants needs to satisfy their own instead, then the infant will
develop
mistrust. He or she will be apprehensive and suspicious around people.

If the proper balance is achieved, the child will develop the virtue
hope,
the strong belief that, even when things are not going well, they will
work out well in the end. One of the signs that a child is doing well
in
the first stage is when the child isn't overly upset by the need to
wait
a moment for the satisfaction of his or her needs: Mom or dad don't
have
to be perfect; I trust them enough to believe that, if they can't be
here
immediately, they will be here soon; Things may be tough now, but they
will work out in the end. This is the same ability that, in later life,
gets us
through
disappointments in love, our careers, and other domains of life.

Stage two

The second stage is the toddler, from about eighteen months
to
three or four years old. The task is to achieve a degree of autonomy
while minimizing shame and doubt.

If mom and dad (and the other care-takers that often come into the
picture
at this point) permit the child, now a toddler, to explore and
manipulate
his or her environment, the child will develop a sense of autonomy
(independence).
The parents should not discourage the child, but neither should they
push.
A balance is required. People often advise new parents to be "firm but
tolerant" at this stage, and the advice is good. This way, the child
will
develop both self-control and self-esteem.

On the other hand, it is rather easy for the child to develop
instead
a sense of shame and doubt. If the parents come down hard on any
attempt
to explore and be independent, children will soon give up with and
assume
that they cannot and should not act on their own. We should keep in
mind
that
even something as innocent as laughing at the toddler's efforts can
lead
the child to feel deeply ashamed, and to doubt his or her abilities.

And there are other ways to lead children to shame and doubt: If you
give children unrestricted freedom and no sense of limits, or if you
try
to help children do what they should learn to do for themselves, you
will
also give them the impression that they are not good for much. If you
aren't
patient enough to wait for your child to tie his or her shoe-laces,
your
child will never learn to tie them, and will assume that this is just
too
difficult
to learn!

Shame and doubt sound very negative. Do we really need them?
Yes, unless you think it is a good idea to run around naked in public
or jump off of buildings.

If you get the proper, positive balance of autonomy and shame and
doubt,
you will develop the virtue of willpower (determination). One
of
the most admirable - and frustrating - thing about two- and
three-year-olds
is their determination. "Can do" is their motto. If we can preserve
that
"can do" attitude (with appropriate modesty to balance it) we are much
better off as adults.

Stage three

Stage three is the preschooler. From three or four to five
or
six, the task confronting every child is to learn
initiative without
too much guilt.

Initiative means a positive response to the world's challenges,
taking
on responsibilities, learning new skills, feeling purposeful. Parents
can
encourage initiative by encouraging children to try out their ideas. We
should accept and encourage fantasy and curiosity and imagination. This
is a time for play, not for formal education. The child is now capable,
as never before, of imagining a future situation, one that isn't a
reality
right now. Initiative is the attempt to make that non-reality a
reality.

But if children can imagine the future, if they can plan, then they
can be responsible as well, and guilty. If my two-year-old flushes my
watch
down the toilet, I can safely assume that there were no "evil
intentions."
It was just a matter of a shiny object going round and round and down.
What fun! But if my five year old does the same thing... well, she
should
know what's going to happen to the watch, what's going to happen to
daddy's
temper, and what's going to happen to her! She can be guilty of the
act,
and she can begin to feel guilty as well. The capacity for moral
judgement
has arrived.

Do we really need guilt? Very much. The only people that
don't feel guilt are called psychopaths.

A good balance leads to the psychosocial strength of purpose.
A sense of purpose is something many people crave in their lives, yet
many
do not realize that they themselves make their purposes, through
imagination
and initiative. I think an even better word for this virtue would have
been courage, the capacity for action despite a clear understanding of
your limitations and past failings.

Stage four

Stage four is the school-age child from about six to twelve.
The task is to develop a capacity for industry while avoiding
an
excessive sense of inferiority. Children must "tame the
imagination"
and dedicate themselves to education and to learning the social skills
their society requires of them.

There is a much broader social sphere at work now: The parents and
other
family members are joined by teachers and peers and other members of he
community at large. They all contribute: Parents must encourage,
teachers
must care, peers must accept. Children must learn that there is
pleasure
not only in conceiving a plan, but in carrying it out. They must learn
the feeling of success, whether it is in school or on the playground,
academic
or social.

A good way to tell the difference between a child in the third stage
and one in the fourth stage is to look at the way they play games.
Four-year-olds
may love games, but they will have only a vague understanding of the
rules,
may
change them several times during the course of the game, and be very
unlikely
to actually finish the game, unless it is by throwing the pieces at
their
opponents. A seven-year-old, on the other hand, is dedicated to the
rules,
considers them pretty much sacred, and is more likely to get upset if
the
game is not allowed to come to its required conclusion.

If the child is allowed too little success, because of harsh
teachers
or rejecting peers, for example, then he or she will develop instead a
sense of inferiority or incompetence. An additional source of
inferiority
Erikson mentions is racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination:
If a child believes that success is related to who you are rather than
to how hard you try, then why try?

A happier thing is to develop the right balance of industry and
inferiority - that is, mostly industry with just a touch of inferiority
to keep us
sensibly humble. Then we have the virtue called competency.

Stage five

Stage five is adolescence, beginning with puberty and ending
around 18 or 20 years old. The task during adolescence is to achieve ego
identity and avoid role confusion. It was adolescence that
interested
Erikson first and most, and the patterns he saw here were the bases for
his thinking about all the other stages.

Ego identity means knowing who you are and how you fit in to the
rest
of society. It requires that you take all you've learned about life and
yourself and mold it into a unified self-image, one that your community
finds meaningful.

There are a number of things that make things easier: First, we
should
have a mainstream adult culture that is worthy of the adolescent's
respect,
one with good adult role models and open lines of communication.
If the teenager looks around and sees nothing but sexism, racism,
war-mongering, unbridled materialism, self-centered hedonism,
puritanical self-righteousness, etc. - why bother to become an adult?

Further, society should provide clear rites of passage -
certain
accomplishments and rituals that help to distinguish the adult from the
child. In primitive and traditional societies, an adolescent boy may be
asked to leave the village for a period of time to live on his own,
hunt
some symbolic animal, or seek an inspirational vision. Boys and girls
may
be required to go through certain tests of endurance, symbolic
ceremonies,
or educational events. In one way or another, the distinction between
the
powerless but carefree time of childhood and the powerful and
responsible
time of adulthood, is made clear.

Without these things, we are likely to see role confusion, meaning
an
uncertainty about one's place in society and the world. When an
adolescent
is confronted by role confusion, Erikson say he or she is suffering
from
an identity crisis. In fact, a common question adolescents in our
society
ask is a straight-forward question of identity: "Who am I?"
Notice how long it takes, in our society, before we have an answer to
the parallel question "What do I want to be when I grow up?"

If you successfully negotiate this stage, you will have the virtue
Erikson
called fidelity. Fidelity means loyalty, the ability to live by
society's standards despite the imperfections and incompleteness and
inconsistencies. We are not talking about blind loyalty, and we are not
talking about accepting those imperfections. After all, if you love
your
community, you will want to see it become the best it can be. But
fidelity
means that you have found a place in that community, a place that will
allow you to contribute.

Stage six

If you have made it this far, you are in the stage of the young
adult,
which lasts (in modern society) from about 20 to about 30. The ages in
the adult stages are
much fuzzier than in the childhood stages, and people may differ
dramatically.
The task is to achieve some degree of intimacy, as opposed to
remaining
in isolation.

Intimacy is the ability to be close to others, as a lover, a friend,
and as a participant in society. Because you have a clear sense of who
you are, you no longer need to fear "losing" yourself, as many
adolescents
do. The "fear of commitment" some people seem to exhibit is an example
of immaturity in this stage. This fear isn't always so obvious. Many
people
today are always putting off the progress of their relationships: I'll
get married (or have a family, or get involved in important social
issues)
as soon as I finish school, as soon as I have a job, as soon as I have
a house, as soon as.... If you've been engaged for the last ten years,
what's holding you back?

Neither should the young adult need to prove him- or herself
anymore.
A teenage relationship is often a matter of trying to establish
identity
through "couple-hood." A teenager might respond to "Who am I?" with
"I'm her boy-friend" or "I'm his girl-friend". The young adult
relationship
should be a matter of two independent egos wanting to create something
larger than themselves.

If you successfully negotiate this stage, you will carry
with
you for the rest of your life the virtue or psychosocial strength
Erikson
calls love. Love, in the context of his theory, means being
able
to put aside differences and antagonisms through "mutuality of
devotion."
It includes not only the love we find in a good marriage, but the love
between friends and the love of one's neighbor, co-worker, and
compatriot
as well.

Stage seven

The seventh stage is that of the middle adult. It is hard to
pin a time to it, but it would include the period during which we are
actively
involved in raising children. For most people in our society, this
would
put it somewhere between 30 and 60. The
task here is to cultivate the proper balance of generativity and
stagnation.

Generativity is an extension of love into the future. It is a
concern
for the next generation and all future generations. As such, it is
considerably
less "selfish" than the intimacy of the previous stage: Intimacy, the
love
between lovers or friends, is a love between equals, and it is
necessarily
reciprocal. Oh, of course we love each other unselfishly, but the
reality
is such that, if the love is not returned, we don't consider it a true
love. With generativity, that implicit expectation of reciprocity isn't
there, at least not as strongly. Few parents expect a "return on their
investment" from their children; If they do, they aren't
very good parents!

Although the majority of people practice generativity by having and
raising children, there are many other ways as well. Erikson considers
teaching, writing, invention, the arts and sciences, social activism,
and
generally contributing to the welfare of future generations to be
generativity
as well.

This is the stage of the "midlife crisis." Sometimes men and women
take
a look at their lives and ask that big, bad question "what am I doing
all this
for?"
Notice the question carefully: Because their focus is on themselves,
they
ask what, rather than whom, they are doing it for. In their panic at
getting
older and not having experienced or accomplished what they imagined
they
would when they were younger, they try to recapture their youth. Men
are
often the most flambouyant examples: They leave their long-suffering
wives,
quit their humdrum jobs, buy some "hip" new clothes, buy a Porsche, and
start hanging
around singles bars. Of course, they seldom find what they are looking
for, because they are looking for the wrong thing!

But if you are successful at this stage, you will have a capacity
for
caring
that will serve you through the rest of your life.

Stage eight

This last stage, referred to delicately as late adulthood or
maturity, or less delicately as old age, begins sometime around
retirement,
after the kids have gone, somewhere around 60 years old in our society.
Some older folks
will
protest and say it only starts when you feel old and so on, but that's
an effect of our youth-worshipping culture, which has even old people
avoiding
any acknowledgement of age. In Erikson's theory, reaching this stage is
a good thing, and not reaching it suggests that earlier problems
retarded
your development!

The task is to develop ego integrity with a minimal amount
of
despair.
This stage, especially from the perspective of youth, seems like the
most
difficult of all. First comes a detachment from society, from a sense
of
usefulness, for most people in our culture. Some retire from jobs
they've
held for years; others find their duties as parents coming to a close;
most find that their input is no longer asked for or required.

Then there is a sense of biological uselessness, as the body no
longer
does everything it used to. Women go through a sometimes dramatic
menopause;
Men often find they can no longer "rise to the occasion." Then there
are
the illnesses of old age, such as arthritis, diabetes, heart problems,
concerns about breast and ovarian and prostrate cancers. There come
fears
about things that one was never afraid of before - the flu, for
example,
or just falling down.

Along with the illnesses come concerns of death. Friends die.
Relatives
die. One's spouse dies. It is, of course, certain that you, too, will
have
your turn. Faced with all this, it might seem like everyone would feel
despair.

In response to this despair, some older people become preoccupied
with
the past. After all, that's where things were better. Some become
preoccupied
with their failures, the bad decisions they made, and regret that
(unlike
some in the previous stage) they really don't have the time or energy
to
reverse them. We find some older people become depressed, spiteful,
paranoid,
hypochondriacal, or developing the patterns of senility with or without
physical bases.

Ego integrity means coming to terms with your life, and thereby
coming
to terms with the end of life. If you are able to look back and accept
the course of events, the choices made, your life as you lived it, as
being
necessary, then you needn't fear death. Although most of you are not at
this point in life, perhaps you can still sympathize by considering
your
life up to now. We've all made mistakes, some of them pretty nasty
ones;
Yet, if you hadn't made these mistakes, you wouldn't be who you are. If
you had been very fortunate, or if you had played it safe and made very
few mistakes, your life would not have been as rich as is.

Someone who approaches death without fear has the strength Erikson
calls
wisdom.
He calls it a gift to children, because "healthy children will not fear
life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death." He
suggests
that a person must be somewhat gifted to be truly wise, but I would
like
to suggest that you understand "gifted" in as broad a fashion as
possible:
I have found that there are people of very modest gifts who have taught
me a great deal, not by their wise words, but by their simple and
gentle
approach to life and death, by their "generosity of spirit."